Database Software and Spoken Language Analysis

Abstract

The introduction of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), with its comprehensive, innovative database software, has assisted researchers in the realm of corpus linguistics to analyse in-depth learners' corpora. The latter, being written or spoken, can be scrutinised from diverse perspectives hinging on the researcher's prime aims. The process of recording, transcribing and analysing spoken language might be intricate. Given that, many Master two students at the department of English Language of Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia University- Jijel show reluctance to use database applications to treat their spoken corpora, as it requires both the analysis and the transcription of audio files into written one; a process that might be tiresome and time-consuming if conducted manually. Therefore, the present paper aspires to introduce some widely used software that may facilitate their research process and expose some practical applications that might be used in the data analysis. More importantly, the paper aims at displaying some web-based tools put into practice to probe some speaking skill features, namely fluency and Complexity. The massive range of applications accredited to analyse language complexity is textinspector.com and lextutor.ca, whereas the Praat application is deemed one of the best software implemented to investigate speech fluency